Free Byzantium's Crown by Susan Shwartz Page A

though, that you could trust them. Now it seemed as if even the high priest knew of his plight and spurned him. He would never have believed that Irene could prevail with that one: his father had trusted him with his soul.
    This priest stared at Marric. Master of no man, least of yourself. And thus, a slave.
    He broke the contact. When the auctioneer appealed to him for a higher bid on Nicephorus, he shook his head. Then he and his entourage swept from the market.
    Nicephorus was knocked down to the major-domo. A pity for Nico: he might have liked temple service. Then Marric clenched his fists, fighting the twin follies of cursing a priest or hurling himself after one. A push at the small of his back sent him stumbling onto the block. He breathed deeply to control his rage. Disgust rose like bile in his mouth. The auctioneer saw that and praised his chest expansion.
    Set take you, I'm not a war-horse! Marric turned on the man, murder in his eyes. The audience gasped. Men with spears pointed them at him.
    "Spirited," the auctioneer recovered his ready patter of encouragement to the crowd, "but high tempered as he is, he is biddable. Watch this, my masters!"
    Holding Marric's eyes with his own the way Marric had trained horses, he slapped his face. Marric's head jerked to one side, and his eyes dimmed with shame.
    Master of no man, least of yourself.
    It wasn't just his line that was unsound. He himself was disastrously flawed, and Alexander had known it. His father had taught Marric that the priests of Osiris never did anything by chance. So Marric's enslavement must be ordained as surely as the Nile's next flood. Even if he escaped, though, Alexa was dead.
    Marric fixed his eyes above the heads of the dealers, owners, agents, and passersby who stared at him. A big man hurled an overripe fruit at him, and it spattered over his face and chest. Marric started forward. As the spearsmen raised their weapons, he froze, but just barely.
    "Did I not tell you?" the man said to the major-domo who had bought Nicephorus. His voice had a piercing quality that Marric could not shut out.
    "The slave is dangerous."
    "Of course he's dangerous. That's the challenge. But he could be broken, molded by a better man. Ahhh, Strymon, just let me work him over during the summer, and you'll have a slave-guard worth twice as much as he'll go for now. We could resell him." He grinned and poked the major-domo, an austere freedman, in the ribs.
    "What d'ye say, Strymon? The mistress gets pleased by the profits, and maybe she splits it with us. Or maybe you and that new scribe juggle—"
    Strymon raised a hand, increasing his bid for Marric.
    "—juggle the accounts and she never—"
    Again Strymon's hand went up.
    "—guesses. And if he doesn't take to . . . training, why then, he isn't going for that much more than a field worker. Even after the sea crossing, look at the muscles on him."
    "Do I hear another bid? You, sir? You, my lady?" A leer from the auctioneer set the audience laughing raucously. "No? Your loss then, on those long, dull evenings. Going once, going twice—"
    Strymon raised his hand again. No one matched his bid.
    "Sold!"
    "Sutekh," Strymon told the bigger man, "I'm buying him not for your reasons, but because we can get good labor out of him—that is, we'll be able to assuming you're half the overseer you claim to be. But when you school this one, take care. Lose our mistress her investment again, and Maat witness I'll have you on that block yourself to pay her back. Am I quite understood? Do you want me to repeat it more slowly?"
    Sutekh the overseer nodded, though his blockish face reddened under its shenti, and the muscles straining his coarse tunic swelled as he fought down anger at the threat. He glared over at Marric. And Marric realized that he had been sold for the price of a good cavalry remount into a household where the overseer already resented him.
     

Chapter Six
    Marric trudged with the other newly acquired outdoor